Dear Tokyo

Week 9

"I really do not get him."

Edu had gone off with his friend Salvador, who was actually a postgraduate student but was on the same scholarship as Edu, which was how they met. They were having ramen somewhere to celebrate the end of midterms and, though we had been invited, Cat and I had our own plans involving the Starbucks at Seijogakuen-mae so we declined, but that meant Estel was heading back home with us.

"Who?" I said.

"Edu," Cat said.

Estel didn't notice our exchange. "Is he touchy with you, Ric?"

"Not particularly," I said, unsure if this was a legitimate question or another underhanded tactic to rub something in my face. "He does love a good scratch though."

"He's like a dog." Cat rolled her eyes.

"He's always flirting with me and, when we're sitting next to each other in the lounge or something, he'll put his head in my lap or be really affectionate or whatever, but Marc told me that Edu told him that he doesn't know whether he wants a relationship. Like, he's such a coward."

Marc was one of the other students from their university in Barcelona.

"Don't you like that Dae guy?" I asked, glancing at Cat.

"Well, yeah, kind of," Estel said, "but this is why. If Edu just decided what he wants then I wouldn't have to be so confused. Dae is really nice and he actually made an effort to come to our cultural festival and all that but it's hard since Saitama is so far away—" Cat, whose boyfriend lived in Saitama, cleared her throat—"and he's also shy so I don't know if he'll make the first move and things are going slowly since I never see him. Whereas Edu just flirts with me everyday and I had to be the one to force him to say whether he likes me or not."

"Wait, so he's admitted it to you now?" I said.

"Pretty much, yeah, but he doesn't want a relationship so what's the point?"

"Well, he doesn't know yet," I corrected, "and the question you gotta ask yourself is who you want the relationship with."

We tapped our cards at the gate and jogged down the stairs, a train slowing down to a stop at the platform just as we got to the bottom. The cars were mostly empty around this time but it was out of habit that we stood by the doors near the pole. Our stop wasn't so far away that we needed to sit down, even if we had just had a full day of exams.

"But, it's like ..." Estel sighed. "I do like Edu, but I told him to stop flirting with me if he's not sure he wants a relationship, and he actually stopped."

For a moment, Cat and I just blinked at each other, wondering who was going to break the news to her first.

"I know," Estel said, "but the fact that he's actually distant makes me feel like he doesn't really want me. I'm just the hot chick as always, I guess." She stuck her tongue out like a Girls Gone Wild parody.

"If he's got his own issues to work out before he can decide if he's ready for a relationship, you can't fault him for respecting your wishes and leaving you alone, and you were previously tossing up between him and Dae so you have your own things to work out, even though it sounds to me like, deep down, you know who you really want. If you like him enough, you have to make it work."

"Easy for you to say," Estel muttered.

It really wasn't. The fact that she was putting me in a position where I had to give her advice about how to advance her relationship with the guy I liked was surreal. Even more so, she didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with it. It was almost as if she had forgotten I also held feelings for him. Before her, for that matter, if I wanted to be petty about it, and she had fed me all those lines about rooting for it.

"Just tell him all of this," I said. Our train reached our station and we got off. The air underground was fresher than that of the tension in the train and I walked ahead on the stairs, hoping we had put the topic to bed.

Estel parted ways with us, not in the mood for Starbucks, thank god, and Cat and I breathed a sigh of relief as we got our coffee orders and found a table next to the window.

"Are you okay?"

I looked up from my drink to her. "Yeah. Why?"

"Sorry I left you to do all the talking. I just didn't know what to say."

"It's all right. I just don't know why she brought that up in front of me in the first place."

"It kind of seemed like it was on purpose."

"Right?" I slumped onto the table. "I don't know." Estel was three years younger than me so I wanted to believe she was just naive. Despite all the backhanded comments I'd had to endure the past two months while watching her and Edu grow closer, she hadn't given me an explicit reason to believe she was capable of being genuinely mean to me.

Honestly, it was more than I could say for myself. One of the reasons Cat and I made plans to come to Starbucks, besides the fact that it was becoming a routine for us, was because Cat's classmate had invited her on a weekend trip to Hakone and since she was friends with Ingrid, who was also going, and Ingrid and I were classmates, I had been invited as well. We had come here to do some research, as well as discuss whether or not it was wrong of us not to invite Estel.

On one side, it wasn't our trip. Ursula was the one who had brought up the idea and so everyone saw her as the organiser. She was the most anal about planning the itinerary anyway. On the other hand, all the girls were nice enough to be fine with Estel coming along and we knew the real reason we hadn't invited her was a selfish one.

"Judging by today, the whole mood of that trip would be so tense if she came," Cat said, which I had to agree with. I wasn't about to spend three days in snowy Hakone complaining about being single and how the only boys you could trust were named Jimin.

"I'm just so over the drama."

"Same."

"I think I'm gonna tell Edu I like him."

Cat choked on her dark chocolate frappe and coughed into her fist. "What?"

"He and Estel clearly have their own issues to work out and I already know he doesn't like me anyway. I might as well just tell him so that I can get rejected and move on, right?"

The question was met with stunned silence until Cat shook herself. "You would do that?"

"Why not?"

"People don't usually want to get rejected."

I laughed. "He basically already has rejected me. I just want to hear it said to my face. My brother's got a conference in Kobe next weekend and I'm gonna get a shinkansen down to meet him and spend a few days there with him so I'm thinking I can do it the night before I leave, then I'll at least get a break from seeing Edu for a while after that."

"What about the omikuji from Kawagoe?"

"Maybe it was talking about someone else." I still had a whole year in Japan for other fish.

Cat tilted her head from side to side in deliberation. "It's a good idea," she admitted. She reached across for my hand even though it was wet and cold from holding onto my coffee cup so hard. "Whatever you decide, I'm right here."

I smiled. I flipped my hand so our palms were against each other's. "I know."